SAPVIA Programme Manager, Niveshen Govender, is the first African representative on the board of the Global Solar Council. Govender was elected to serve as a Director on the Global Solar Council Board at the AGM held in Las Vegas.
“This is great honour for me personally, but more importantly it is a fantastic opportunity to show the rest of the world what we have to offer. South Africa remains and important gateway into the rest of Africa and this is particularly true when it comes to solar,” says Govender.
Global Solar Council is international organization formed at Paris during the COP 21 Climate Dialogue and represents solar industry from major countries such as USA, France, China, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Israel and Middle East countries like UAE and Saudi Arabia.
In previous years the council was only led by representatives from developed countries, but this year Indian representative Pranav R Mehta was unanimously elected as Chairman-elect of Global Solar Council at its board meeting in Las Vegas.
“SAPVIA was a founding member of the Global Solar Council because we recognised early on the need to coordinate world solar energy efforts. Our relationship with other experienced members on the GSC has allowed us to leverage their experience to develop our own solar capacity,” said Govender.
“A case in point would be the PV GreenCard that we developed in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and German Solar Industry Association, BSW-Solar as well as other local and international renewable bodies such as GreenCape and SARETEC.”
Govender says that despite political uncertainty South Africa, the country’s rich solar resources means that it is still looked upon and a good destination for investment in solar. “In a rapidly developing local industry as we have in South Africa we can learn a great deal from our international partners and his seat on the council will help turn global eyes towards South Africa’s solar potential,” he says.
Job creation has always been a personal passion of Govender’s and one of the major goals of the GSC is to create 10milllion global jobs in solar by 2030 – something that he is eager to contribute towards.
SAPVIA represents 180 member organisations in the solar PV industry spanning technical service providers, installer, EPC companies, financiers, developers, utilities and IPP’s.
